To thine own self be true

Procrastination, hang on, wait a minute…

Sometimes I don’t start writing my blog because I don’t feel inspired or excited enough about what I want to say, so I leave it to come back to later. Then I remember my core committment is to write often just so that I am getting some practise.

An expression I love, that helps me get started, is “if something is worth doing, it is worth doing badly, for starters :-)” Sometimes I feel that what I do is not good enough and the fear of failure stops me from proceeding. I encouraged my children to at least give something a go, as starting can be a very powerful tool in overcoming our fear of failure.

I procrastinate at doing exercise. I blame the heat, the cold, the wind, too busy, too tired etc etc. Instead of going for a long walk, sometimes I will at least do a short walk to buy the paper or some bread. Once I get moving I decide to walk a bit further after all.

I find it helps me to write a list of things I need to do and then number them in order of priority. I do love ticking off the jobs/tasks once they are completed. For the recent wedding in our family I had a list of 20 things to do – number 20 was to attend the wedding and celebrations afterwards. It really helped having that list to check things off as there was so much to do.

If I am overwhelmed with a task, I break it down into smaller, achievable jobs. I do a Mind Map and write down every single thing I can think of, group them and then prioritise. It moves the items from my head to a piece of paper and leaves room in my head to think more clearly 🙂